Friday, May 26, 2017

I’ve
been cogitating recently on the statement I’ve seen in a few places
that “it makes sense to show a dog in conformation shows before breeding
it to make sure a judge has a chance to say that the dog has good or
bad conformation.” I just posted this to a breed-specific mailing list
in response to that statement, and am curious what y’all think of it:

I think the real question is whether a judge selects a dog based on
healthy structure or based on something else. I suspect it varies by
judge, but the concern is that, given a ring of dogs all with good
structure, the dog with some other flashy attribute will win (thick
coat, particular head or ear shape). Then people start breeding for that
attribute in order to win. Then that attribute gets valued over good
structure. I think the fear that this will happen in any given breed is
valid, given what we've seen in other breeds - take the show German
Shepherd with its very sloping backline or the tastefully plump show
Labrador.

What it comes down to for me is, what is the best way
to evaluate healthy structure in a dog before breeding? I don’t think
conformation shows are that way. I suggest a) making sure the dog is
able to work well and without pain b) giving the dog time to mature to
see if it has any structural unsoundness and c) having the dog examined
by a veterinary orthopedic specialist. There are plenty of structural
issues that are just not going to show up on physical exam (whether
performed by vet or by judge), which is why (a) and (b) are so
important.

Thoughts from the blogosphere?
Bonus dog photo because every post needs a photo (of a purebred dog out of parents who were never shown in coformation shows, and a mixed breed whose parents were probably not selected with any sort of care at all):

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Today I’m working on revisions for my DNA class at IAABC, which starts Monday, April 24. This will be the second time I’ve offered this class; it’s the first in a series of four classes (which you can take in any order, so this one isn’t required for later classes). And the auditor’s price is still super low to encourage people to take it just for fun.

I’m never sure how to promote this class. Will it offer you direct insights into how to modify behavior? It won’t, of course. It will tell you what DNA is and what genes are and how at a low level DNA differences affect traits. For how to apply this stuff to behavior consulting, you should refer to the fourth class in the series, which is about behavioral genetics.

But while the fourth class has that stuff we all want to know in it, to really understand how all that stuff works you really want to take this first class. Sometimes I think of this one as the vegetables class: you have to eat your veggies before you can have your dessert. But I hope it’s not just because I’m a genetics geek that I do think this class has some fascinating material in its own right. It’s not overcooked frozen peas, it’s heirloom tomatoes from the farmer's market. In later classes I’ll talk about the weird ways our DNA can affect our personalities, and in order to deeply understand what I mean, you want to know how DNA is put together and how the body reads the genetic code and how things can go wrong.

And by the way, I make sure all of my classes have something in them for everyone, so if you are a genetics geek too, come take the class for the optional resources, which have loads of articles with new research findings in which we (surprise!) realize DNA is more complicated than we at first thought, and getting more complicated the closer we look at it.

And if anyone can help me explain how to market this funny little class and explain to people that this really is stuff it’s good to know (for behavior consulting but also just for life in the middle of the Genomics Revolution) then please tell me!

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Why are some dogs better at paying attention to humans,
particularly human gestures like pointing, than others? We know genetics
has something to do with it, because some breeds (like border collies)
are a lot better at responding to human signals than others like beagles. To better understand the biology driving differences in ability to respond to human signals, researchers at the Family Dog Project
compared dogs and wolves as they grew up. They knew that wolves can
respond to human signals, but that they are better at this when they
have been extensively socialized, whereas dogs can understand human
signals with much less socialization. But at what age do these
differences manifest?

Image from the Family Dog Project

The researchers used a pointing test to measure ability to respond to
human signals. This test has been used on dogs before: if a dog is
given a choice of two bowls, only one of which contains food, and he
can't see where the food is, will he follow a person's pointing gesture
to pick the right bowl? (The bowl with no food in it is rubbed with food
so the dogs can't use their noses to get the right answer.) This test
has been done in the past with dogs versus human children (dogs do about the same as two year old kids
on this task), dogs versus wolves (dogs generally outperform wolves,
unless the wolves have a whole lot of experience with humans), and dogs
versus chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives (dogs outperform
chimps!).

For this study, the researchers compared hand-reared (i.e., well
socialized) 8-week old dog and wolf puppies; 4 month old dog and wolf
puppies; and adult dogs and wolves. They tested the animals' abilities
both with "proximal" pointing (putting their finger right up to the
bowl) and "distal" pointing (standing farther away and indicating the
bowl) - except that, since very young puppies and wolves don't see well,
they didn't test the distal pointing in the 8 week old babies. What
they found:

The 8 week old puppies (dogs and wolves) had similar ability to
follow the proximal pointing gesture with the researcher's finger right
next to the bowl. However, 6 of the 13 wolf puppies tested had to be
removed from the trial because they couldn't be held on the start line
or didn't go choose a bowl. Of the 9 puppies, only one was removed for
similar reasons.

4 month old dogs did better at distal pointing (with the researcher
standing away from the bowl and indicating it) than 4 month old wolves
did. In fact, the 4 month old wolves seemed to do no better than chance.

Adult dogs and wolves did equally well with both proximal and distal pointing.

At all three ages, wolves needed more time to establish eye contact with the pointing human than dogs did.

So all the animals at all ages were able to understand a pointing
gesture when the human put their hand right up to the bowl. But pointing
from farther away was harder, as you'd expect. Very young puppies (dog
and wolf) were not tested on that task. At four months, wolves hadn't
figured it out yet, but dogs had. As adults, the wolves had caught up.
These were highly socialized adult wolves with a great deal of
experience with humans.

It's interesting that dogs seem to develop the ability to understand a
more difficult human pointing gesture at a younger age than wolves -
and particularly interesting that this may have to do with the fact that
wolves are not as eager to look us in the eye as dogs are. (If you
don't look at someone, it's hard to follow their pointing gesture!)

So what does this mean for differences in different dog breeds? Do
different dog breeds have differences in the timing of their cognitive
development? Does this affect how much attention they pay to us, and
perhaps how easy they are to train? We don't know, but I think this is one direction dog research needs to go.

(By the way, check out the original paper - it's open access, and has some great videos of dog and wolf puppies at the end!)

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Since the article was about getting a new puppy and provided pointers to this blog I figured it was a good idea to suggest some old posts to any new readers. As always, for a constant stream of interesting dog science articles not written by me, follow me on Twitter or like my page on Facebook!

About the Dog Zombie

Jessica Perry Hekman, DVM, PhD is fascinated by dog brains. She is a postdoctoral associate at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she studies the genetics of dog behavior. Her interests include the stress response in mammals, canine behavior, canine domestication, shelter medicine, animal welfare, and open access publishing. You may learn more about Jessica at www.dogzombie.com, or email her at jph at dogzombie dot com. All opinions expressed here are her own.

For the animal shall not be measured by man… They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth. (Henry Beston)